January 08, 2015

This past September,New York Timeswriter Alessandra Stanleywrote a passive-aggressive featureon actressViola Davis and her role in the titillating new series favorite,How to Get Away With Murder. Stanley not only ascribed the ‘Angry Black Woman’ trope to Davis’s character Annalise Keating (and acclaimed TV producer and screenwriter Shonda Rhimes) in the opening paragraph, but she also suggested that the actress inhabited an unlikely position as a leading a woman on Primetime TV, because she isn't as “classically beautiful” as actresses like Halle Berry (who is biracial) and Kerry Washington (whose aesthetic, style and stature are considered 'safe' enough to placate, and even inspire, mainstream TV and film viewers).

March 13, 2013

This post was originally published on Coffee Rhetoric March 28, 2012 and has been updated with current information and re-posted in commemoration of Women's History Month ...

I am passionate
about a number of social issues, paticularly those pertaining to the well-being of Black women. And while I may project my voice and stand in solidarity with others, about certain things, I am leery and strategic about whose and what rhetoric I co-sign. I’m solitary in my work and don’t belong to or
align myself with any new movements because, from my' vantage points, they often implode and it stops being about the issue(s).
That aside, I've found the language and writings of a certain subset of Black women to be very problematic. They attribute their work to Black Women
Empowerment (BWE) and consider themselves the voices of reason for the elevation
of Black womanhood. There are undoubtedly some women who have managed to successfully carve out
a niche and use Black feminist and BWE platforms to inform and provide
legitimate, insightful, and thought provoking content about the importance of recognizing race within feminism and feminist theory. They’ve been tireless about advocating for Black women and young girls, in a society where we're often invisible, ridiculed, and further marginalized.